My Sister Has Taken Up Quilting--March BJP

My sister has taken up quilting. So she called me with some questions. We talked about how to use a rotary cutter without cutting off your finger. That was lesson number one. We talked about seam allowances, color choices, starching the fabric, and which blocks are more difficult for beginners. And we talked about ripping out. If that wasn't lesson number two, it should have been.

We had several conversations about color schemes. Her color choices are bolder than mine. She has always liked red. In fact, one of my earliest memories is making Christmas cookies with my mother and my sister. The cookies were decorated with red and green sugar. I can remember my sister insisting that the red cookies were hers and our mother saying that the green cookies were mine. Green then became my favorite color because red was her favorite color.

My sister and I don't live near each other. She lives where there are hurricanes and I live where there's lake effect snow. We don't see each other often, and we very seldom talk on the phone.

But during her first adventures in quilting this winter, we had lots of telephone conversations. One day, she called me three times. I loved it! Now it's my turn to make some calls.

March is her birthday month so I decided to honor her with my March BJP. I chose red for her because I have such a strong memory of her red Christmas cookies.

Technical Details:
The Foundation is Lacy's Stiff Stuff painted with red Dye-na-Flow.

There is a red heart, 6/0s, 8/0s, 11/0s, 15/0s, hexes, twists, triangles, cubes, bugles, and Delicas.

The size is 2.25 inches by 3 inches.

The stitches used were the backstitch, the picot stitch, and the stop stitch. There are also ruffles and branched fringe.

I used C-lon size A thread in red.

What I Was Thinking:

I was thinking about my sister and remembering our times growing up. And I was also thinking about our mother. They were all good thoughts. I also thought about my favorite color. Beginning with the Christmas cookie baking, my favorite color was green. Of course it was. There could be no doubt. But sometime after the age of, er, middle, I was able to change my mind. My favorite color is blue. If only there had been blue sugar for cookies in the 1940s, I would have known all along.

Issues That Came Up:

Once I started putting the ruffles and branched fringe in, I found myself thinking more and more about how to work toward balance and unity in this piece. I'm not sure I succeeded, but it was an interesting exercise in how much to improvise and how much to plan. There's a minimal amount of planning in this piece.

If you want to see the birthday card I made for my sister, look at the post below.